22. Apiary Batch Workflow

For an apiary with more than a few hives, opening each hive's full form one at a time can be slow in the field. Quick Inspect and Batch Treatment let you work through a whole apiary in one pass.

22.1 Quick Inspect

From an apiary's detail screen, tap Quick Inspect. Each hive in the apiary appears as a collapsed row; tap a row to expand it and record what you saw using checkbox chips, a shorthand text field, and a notes field. Only one row expands at a time, so the list stays easy to scroll. Chips and shorthand stay in sync: tapping a chip updates the text field, and typing a recognized code checks the matching chip.

Only hives with something entered create a record. A live counter at the top shows how many hives will be recorded. Tap Save to review everything on one screen before anything is written. Nothing saves until you confirm.

Near the top of the screen, a date chip and Temperature / Weather Conditions fields apply to every hive the batch records — one set of conditions for the whole visit, not per hive. The date defaults to right now; Temperature and Weather Conditions auto-fill from your current location the same way the single-hive Inspection form does. All three stay fully editable, and the Review screen echoes them back so you can double-check before confirming. If you inspect in the field and write notes on paper, then enter the batch into the app later, set the real inspection date and conditions before saving — otherwise the records would show when you typed them up, not when you actually looked at the bees.

Expanding a hive row that has a prior inspection shows a compact summary above the entry fields — the last inspection date, its health rating, and up to two "things to check" cues carried over from what was recorded then (for example, "Swarm cells were present — check if still there"). This is a lighter version of the same Pre-Inspection Briefing shown on the single-hive Inspection form, sized to fit inside a batch row instead of a full screen.

22.2 Batch Treatment

From an apiary's detail screen, tap Batch Treatment. Choose the treatment details once: type, product, method, date, and an optional follow-up date that applies to the whole batch. Then select which hives to include. A bulk dose field fills every selected hive that hasn't had its own dose entered individually; selecting or deselecting a hive doesn't discard whatever you've already entered for it. A standard treatment record (see Section 11) is created for each selected hive. The Review screen echoes back the treatment date you set, so you can double-check it before confirming — useful if you're entering a treatment applied earlier rather than right now.

22.3 Shorthand Codes

Quick Inspect supports typed shorthand for fast entry. Typing QS ES L CB records Queen Seen, Eggs Seen, Larvae Seen, and Capped Brood Present in one line, separated by spaces or commas. Each code stands for one specific inspection value; an unrecognized code blocks Save for the whole batch until it's fixed or cleared, so that hive is never silently left out.

QCC only means something when QC is also active for that hive — it's still an independent code you tap or type, but selecting it without QC records nothing.

Tap the ? next to the shorthand field to see the current code reference at any time.

22.4 Managing Quick Codes

Go to Account → Manage Quick Codes to rename any code's label (up to 4 characters, must be unique within your list) to match shorthand you already use on paper. Renaming a code only changes its label. What it records never changes, and you can't create a code that maps to something new. Reset restores every code to its default label.

22.5 Last Apiary Visit

When you open Quick Inspect or Batch Treatment for an apiary whose last saved batch included a note, a compact banner at the top shows that note and its date, with a View Details link to the full batch. There's deliberately no hive count or record summary here — the last saved batch might have only covered one or two hives out of a much larger apiary, so presenting it as a coverage summary would be misleading. For what happened on a specific hive, expand that hive's row in Quick Inspect instead (see 22.1) — it shows that hive's own last inspection regardless of which batch, if any, it came from.

22.6 Apiary-Level Notes

Both flows have an optional note field for context that covers the whole visit, not any one hive: weather, forage conditions, access issues, equipment needed. It's saved with the batch and shown on the Batch Detail screen and, next time you open a batch for that apiary, in the banner described above; it is not copied into any individual hive's notes.

22.7 Batch Detail & Delete

Open a batch's detail screen from the "Part of batch" link shown on any inspection or treatment record the batch created, or from the note banner's View Details link when one is showing. The screen lists every record the batch created; tap one to open it in the normal single-record edit screen.

Delete Entire Batch permanently deletes every record the batch created, after a confirmation showing the exact count. The apiary and its hives are untouched; only the records that specific batch created are removed.

22.8 Working Offline

Quick Inspect and Batch Treatment work offline the same way as the rest of Bee Inspector. Enter and save a batch without a connection, and it syncs automatically once you're back online.